


Charlottes

by buttercups3



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, alternate end to 1.05, grumpy Miles, season 1 Miles and Charlie, some bad language since we filter through Miles' head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate ending to the “Soul Train” scene in which Miles and Charlie abandon the train bearing Danny to Philly. Ambushed by a wave of memories, grumpy Miles has to motivate Charlie to keep on trucking. Fluff and backstory ensue. This is the Miles and Charlie of old whom I sorely miss!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charlottes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Marciaelena as part of an LJ Secret Santa challenge. Her prompt was: family.

Charlie is fixated on the horizon, alert as a raptor, as if she can still discern the diminishing wisp of smoke and the train’s mournful whistle. Miles doesn’t take his eyes off her, but his brain scuttles among grim problems with unappealing solutions. The horses have run off, and he and Charlie are probably many miles from Noblesville. When he tries to estimate exactly how far they’ve traveled, he keeps picturing one of those daunting word problems from math class: a train is chugging along at such and such speed for thirty-eight minutes. How far has it gone? He’s defeated every time by his own abject stupidity. They’ve got two hours tops until nightfall and heading back toward Nora and Aaron means hours in the opposite direction from where Danny’s bound.  
  
Miles forces himself to reach out and nudge the leathered slope of Charlie’s shoulder. She jumps like she’s forgotten he’s there.  
  
“Hey. We’ll get to him.” _How reassuring._ Personally, Miles detests when people act like saying something makes it true, and here he is doing it like a bona fide parent.  
  
Charlie drags her still shimmering gem-blue eyes to his and stares so intensely that he has to look at his boots. He’s ashamed that he’s failed her. Ashamed of his part in creating the world that conspired to make Danny its captive. Miles suddenly craves a drink so intensely, his mouth dries; his stomach churns.  
  
“You said this was our only chance.” Charlie’s hands clench into white-knuckled balls at her hips.  
  
“Well, I’m an ass. There’s always another chance…until you’re dead,” he grumbles. How nice to see his talents as a black hole (sucking optimism out of innocents) finally paying off. “C’mon Charlie. We’ve got to walk.”  
  
“Where? By the time we make it back to Noblesville, Danny will be in Philadelphia. It’s a fortress there – you said so yourself.”  
  
“So you wanna give up?” he throws up an angry hand, clipping his swords with a mighty _gong_. Fucking hurts, actually. “If you were gonna come all this way just to quit when things got tough, why the hell did you drag me out of my hole? Shoulda just left me there.”  
  
Her pristine eyes fill again with tears, but her chin is set. “Don’t talk to me about quitting. You’re the one who threatens to leave one minute and the next makes promises you can’t keep.”  
  
A bubble of bile blooms and pops in the back of his throat. She can flip the rage switch in him so quickly, he fears he could hit her. But it only takes a moment of forced self-control for him to realize that it’s _him_ he wants to hit. He’s a ruthless and pathetic bastard; she’s good and pure. No wonder they oppose each other like magnets. Every second she spends in his presence he threatens to corrupt her, and yet, she needs him. She’s got _no_ body or _no_ thing but him.  
  
Miles can deny it all he wants, but he vividly remembers each moment he and Charlie spent together before the Blackout – recognized her eyes immediately when she introduced herself at The Grand.  
  
He was always wary of children – dreaded visiting Ben and Rachel for fear they’d plop a snotty, sticky-fingered baby on his knee. But from their first encounter, Charlie had been fascinated by her uncle. She was just crawling; he was on leave in Chicago for the holidays. As soon as he’d let down his guard, thinking everyone had gone to the kitchen to fulfill some alien domestic duty, Charlie furtively advanced upon him, yanking on the leg of his jeans until he had no choice but to pick her up. Then, from his lap, she joyously patted his cheeks – her hands hot, and, yes, jammy (because that just comes with the territory), but he didn’t mind it nearly as much as he would have thought. He pointed out the silver tinsel on the tree and the candy canes to a ruckus of giggling and clapping. Then, assuring himself that no one was around to see, he kissed the top of her wispy blonde head, the softest, powdery-scented silk imaginable. Having always rejected blood bonds – the insane idea that you were supposed to _like_ people just because they shared your last name – for the first time in his life, he believed there might be something to family. Because what else connected this tiny human to him than their shared DNA? He got so choked up over her that he had to put her down.  
  
Miles shakes off his reverie and focuses on that baby grown into quite the determined woman. She hasn’t budged, so he – the general, or better yet, the sergeant – tries another approach to rally his force of one. He just starts walking and launches over his shoulder, “So your dad and I grew up about 140 miles south of here.”  
  
It’s one of his least favorite cans of worms, but he’s desperate to exert his will. In fact, he could never get her to do anything she didn’t want to. That incident that she’d brought up earlier today – when he’d driven the four-year old Charlie in the Challenger – well, he’d begged her to buckle her seatbelt, but she’d stuck out her lip in obstinate refusal. So he’d had to cut her a deal: “You wear your seatbelt, and I’ll buy you an ice-cream cone.” “Two scoops?” “Yes, two scoops.” (Her mother had been less than pleased by the bargain when she later discovered the incriminating evidence of Charlie’s chocolate mustache.)  
  
With relief, Miles senses Charlie now plodding just behind his shoulder.  
  
“Jasper, Indiana, right?” she asks, regrettably taking the bait of his childhood reminiscence.  
  
“Mm hm.”  
  
“I’ve never been…or I don’t remember it.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have been. No reason to.”  
  
“Because Grandma and Grandpa died long before I was born,” she intones, as if parroting a tale she’s been told a hundred times before.  
  
Miles stops and looks back at her. “No.”  
  
“What?” she almost crashes into his side.  
  
“Your grandpa. We don’t know when he died but almost certainly after you were born.”  
  
“But Dad said…”  
  
Miles resumes walking with a shrug. “Pop bugged out on us when Ben was in grad school at Chicago, and I was in the Marines. Sent us a note: _Moved to Florida. Warmer here._ Years later, we learned he’d gone down there to die. Didn’t want us to know he was sick.”  
  
“To _die_? Of what?”  
  
“Prostate cancer. Mom passed of stomach cancer when we were young. Maybe he didn’t want us to go through all that again, but we just thought he was a coward. Or _I_ did. Don’t know what Ben thought.”  
  
“So…you know what it feels like to have everyone you care about taken from you.”  
  
Miles glowers at his feet, resuming his trudge along the train tracks.  
  
He can hear her getting choked up behind him, as she continues, “You know what it feels like to-”  
  
But he cuts her off, not wanting to suffer the barrage of emotions, not wanting to share in them or to share _anything_ with her all of a sudden. Once more, he’s unspeakably angry. “Charlie, I _don’t_ know, ok? People don’t get _taken_ from me – I _drive_ them away.”  
  
“Miles,” she objects, grabbing his arm, which he promptly shakes off to welcome epic self-disgust at his immaturity, his cruelty.  
  
He forces his boots to halt again but doesn’t turn around.  
  
Her voice wavers, “Dad said that I’m named for Grandma Matheson. Is that true?”  
  
He grunts. “Yeah. Charlotte.” And finally, he faces her.  
  
“Was she like me?”  
  
“I don’t know you, Charlie. And I barely knew my mother. Died when I was nine.”  
  
Her bottom lip trembles, and it breaks up something in him that feels, ridiculously, like scar tissue on his heart. He thinks about what it felt like to hold Charlie back at that abandoned amusement park when Maggie expired. Hard to say exactly how that felt…like _family_? Stupid how Charlie’s made him believe that’s a real emotion.  
  
An enormous tear rolls down her cheek and splashes off her chin.  
  
 _Just give it to her, you asshole._ “Yeah, Mom was a bit like you. She was annoyingly determined, and she just _loved_ …all people and animals and stuff. Birds, dogs, grasshoppers – you name it. And she gave amazing hugs. S’all I remember.” He turns away, really fucking alarmed that he might cry. Charlie’s presence is weakening him like kryptonite. He needs to get the hell away from her before he loses himself entirely.  
  
Miles moves to bolt, but Charlie reaches for his hand; her soft fingers soothe like a breeze.  
  
“Thank you,” she says.  
  
“For what?”  
  
“For telling me,” she responds under a cocked eyebrow.  
  
Miles kind of shrugs at Charlie, like it’s the most outrageous thing he’s ever been thanked for, but it’s not, and there’s a part buried deep within him that acknowledges it.  
  
Charlie’s so completely alone, she just wants to share something with him – something unique to them.  
  
“Can we go get your brother now?” he grouses.  
  
“Sure. Can you be less of an ass now?”  
  
“Now you’re just asking too much.”


End file.
